More Like This

Preview

This chapter analyzes the play, Dream on Monkey Mountain. More than thirty years after its first performance, Dream on Monkey Mountain remains Walcott's best-known play, and arguably his best as well. Walcott has claimed that in this play, “the strength of the characterization does not come from me, it comes from the imagination of my people.” Its central character, Makak, “comes from my own childhood,” he recalls. The play emphasizes the divide between English, the language of the colonial courtroom, and patois, the language of the common people.

This chapter analyzes the play, Dream on Monkey Mountain. More than thirty years after its first performance, Dream on Monkey Mountain remains Walcott's best-known play, and arguably his best as well. Walcott has claimed that in this play, “the strength of the characterization does not come from me, it comes from the imagination of my people.” Its central character, Makak, “comes from my own childhood,” he recalls. The play emphasizes the divide between English, the language of the colonial courtroom, and patois, the language of the common people.